This is the course blog for the seminar in U.S. Black Freedom Movements. Students will be submitting their work here throughout the semester. Students can submit links, video clips, and their own thoughts on reading materials and even current events or conversations that intersect with the course.

Friday, March 22, 2013

Theatre of Cruelty and Audience in Black Arts

In his essay, “The Black Arts Movement”, Larry Neal
describes the Black Arts Movement as an ethical one, whose motive is to destroy
white ideology and aesthetics. The Black Arts “envisions an art that speaks
directly to the needs and aspirations of Black America. In order to perform
this task, the Black Arts Movement proposes a radical reordering of the western
cultural aesthetic” (29). He credits Amiri Baraka for starting the movement.
Baraka, himself, personifies this movement within his plays, particularly in
“The Slave Ship”.

In Thursday’s class, Elizabeth mentioned the term “Theatre
of Cruelty”, in which the purpose of the act is to cause discomfort and a
self-reflection on the audience’s perceptions and ideas. One person whom I can
think of currently today who does this well is Dave Chappelle. I recently
watched his comedy sketch, “Killin’ Them Softly”. In it he describes how police
officers beat up black men without any just cause and for spite, and when a
report is filed, the police officers “sprinkle a little crack on them” as a way
to justify their beating of the man. I laughed at this sketch, but it was one
of discomfort and nervousness because Dave exposed a truth in our society about
police violence that still continues but many don’t want to believe as still
occurring in the 2000’s.

The concept of the Theatre of Cruelty made me think about
whom the audience is in the Black Arts Movement. Maybe this is a silly thought,
but I honestly couldn’t determine in Larry Neal’s essay whom the Black Arts
Movement aims to move and instill action within. I definitely can say African
Americans, but I can’t determine whether or not to exclude white Americans out
of the picture. The Blacks Arts Movement is creating a space, that has never
been given, to the black community to fill with their own plays, poems, street
performances, etc… so as to redefine aestheticism and rid it’s hidden precursor
of “white” and add “black”, a move that Baraka believed hadn’t been done even
in the “Harlem Renaissance”.

Yet, in order to do this, I think that a Theatre of Cruelty
needs to be performed on white audiences, to force a radical rethinking of
their own beliefs but also on what constitutes Beauty and Art. But then, I also
think that the Black Arts Movement shouldn’t have to do this and possibly that
white audience members will never appreciate nor fully understand Black Art.

Whether Baraka meant it or not, I experienced a Theatre of
Cruelty after reading his work, “The Slave Ship”. One of the characters is a
reverend, Reverend Tom. In this
character, I really started to witness the ways in which Baraka called into
question white ideology especially in its relationship and manipulation with
black people. Baraka really shows his criticism with this description, “He
tries to be, in fact, assumes he is, dignified, trying to hold his shoulders
straight, but only succeeds in giving his body an odd slant like a diseased coal
chute” (142). The preacher is shown to the audience as a weak leader to his
fellow black men and women, and who ultimately looks for the graces of the
white voices because he’s accepted their “white Jesus”.

After reading this play, I felt uncomfortable by Baraka’s
indirect criticism of Christianity through the figure of the preacher. My
community is Catholic and so are my parents (although I am not), and I think we
sometimes tend to think that Jesus is one of us, meaning white, not black, not
Middle Eastern, and not Jewish. Because Jesus is white, there is no attempt to
engage and reach out to black people, and yet I know that some of the people
who call themselves Catholic often espouse racism. There is no questioning of
how open and accepting the Catholic Church is nor for the matter of its own
racial history. It’s a void that should not exist, and it’s one that came into
my head as I read Baraka’s work.